Here comes the sun !

Well at least for a day or two - enough to make me abandon housework (visitor tomorrow) in favour of a jolly walk through the churchyard and onto the downstream river path, along the Ure and a turn off up the Burn - sun and snowdrops all the way.

The alder catkins look lovely - soon they'll be full of pollen and spring will really be on its way ! They still look good though and fill me full of cheer.

You can see the debris from the river around the roots - in some parts the path was swept away and there is a great deal of sand from the river bed on the path and the banks - doesn't stop the snowdrops though !

Finished at last !

I can't believe how long a 4" square can take to cover with thread ! This is my piece  - the bottom right hand corner of a vastly enlarged photograph taken in Ripley Castle's walled garden last year. The photo was divided up into 60+  4" squares and by a lucky dip process, everyone at the R&L EG took a bag containing a copy of the relevant square, plus calico, wadding, card and instructions for lacing and backing the square. Mine is entirely machine embroidery with a bit of applique, also machined over. I had some problems with distortion, mainly because I forgot to

use a backing fabric for the calico, so had to do a little 'fixing'. The hardest part was the lacing and stretching - this took an inordinate amount of time, mostly because I  haven't had much practise with the technique and because of my tendency to bend the holding pins and get the lacing thread caught around them.
 I probably needed to cut away a little more of the fabric too - the corners are not very sharp . I'd like to say it will be better next time but I am definitely not volunteering to do another. At least the square I got was a simple image - don't want to risk getting a complicated one !

Just checking I remember what to do !

I've had a new laptop since before Christmas and am still trying to work out how to do things. Google+ seems to have changed out of all recognition and it has taken me a long time to find my pics let alone  do anything with them. I have written and deleted this post already because having struggled to get a pic to load onto it, I then found it impossible to add text.

Anyway, for the person (s)? who hasn't given up looking at my blog , here is a pic of a present from my DH  - at least I hope that is what is going to attach ! Clicking on the picture icon gives me the option of uploading from my phone - my attempt to drag the image from my desktop to this post only succeeded in pinning it to Google chrome so goodness knows where that is!

Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained as the cliche goes -         

Well the pic appeared but my efforts to add text beneath it are in vain - no cursor anywhere except where I left off - presumably the image will move down rather than let me write all over it - it used to be so easy in the 'old days' !

RHS Bug House

As my friend has given up posting on this blog, and I have not yet carried out my threat of posting a rather embarrassing photograph of her on here of her bahaviour at an EG Christmas lunch, thought I would add yet another bug house instead!! This one was at Wisley.